


Dictionaries of the printed heart

by breathedout



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: (Although everyone is now of age, (seriously Anna cries a lot in this), Asymmetrical relationship, Bondage, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical voyeurism, Consent Issues, Crying During Sex, Double-crosses, F/F, Fucked-up metamours, Graphic references to (canonical) past sex between a teenager and an adult, Knife Play, Language Kink, Lies and the liars that tell them, Mean Sex, Past teacher/student, Performative Self-Presentation, References to canon-typical mutilation, Revenge, Slapping, Stationery supplies as BDSM kit, The power differential involved in the underage sex does play a role in this story), Triangular relationship, Villanelle's lovers are just as bananas as Villanelle, pain play, written on the body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-08-20 18:38:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20232511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathedout/pseuds/breathedout
Summary: "You see?" Villanelle told her. "You can't do it.""You're right," Anna said. "I can't do it. But—I can do this."(Canon-divergent AU in which Anna, rather than killing herself, tries her hand as hostage, blackmailer, and diplomatic liaison.)





	Dictionaries of the printed heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).

> I wrote this for [Femslash After Dark](https://femslashafterdark.dreamwidth.org/), and while I'm pretty sure (because I know her somewhat) that my recipient is already on the same page here, an FYI for others: although this is a canon-divergent AU in which someone who shoots herself in canon lives instead, and goes on to have a (sort of) threesome with the show's two leads, **I would NOT describe it as a "fix-it fic."** Relationship instability and unhealthiness are similar to, or worse than, how they're depicted in canon, as are the levels of manipulation and murder. It's really dark and not very nice; if anything it's less soft and nice than an already not-very-soft-or-nice canon. Please make your reading decisions accordingly. 
> 
> In other news, man, y'all, I had no idea how to relationship-tag this story, so here's a run-down if it matters to you: all the sex is between Villanelle and Anna, although Eve is also… involved, in at least one scene. As far as emotional arcs, though, especially from Villanelle's perspective, the Eve/Villanelle relationship drives a lot of what's happening; and while from Anna's point of view it's not a driving motivation, it's definitely much on her mind. 
> 
> For folks who don't read French: hovering over the word or phrase will give you a hovertext translation.
> 
> Thanks to [pennypaperbrain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennypaperbrain) for the initial Russia consult and, as always, to the lovely [greywash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash) for the beta in the midst of all! the other! real-life stuff! going on! <3 <3 She is a queen among women.

### 1\. THE COMPOSITOR

**Wednesday, 14:04**  
**The Flat on Tverskaya Ploshchad**

Wonderful, Villanelle thought; _rich_, she could spit: to be back in this city, back in this flat, looking down the barrel of a gun held by Anna Leonova. 

_O_, the kid said, "_bozhe_"; and Villanelle wanting to laugh said, "Oh, hello."

The gun, of course, trembled in Anna's hands. The box of bandages she'd started to take from the gun-drawer had fallen to the floor next to Maxi's armchair, which still had its stupid cactus pillow, and Villanelle thought: that day. The first time after their first time, when Anna had met her eyes again; had invited her over for tea and cakes and she'd felt—_volante_, _triomphante_. All those lovely French words Anna had put in her mouth so that Villanelle could give them back, teeth to tender lips; pour them back into her and then lick them out with her tongue _affamée_; how Villanelle had trembled on the threshold and then _he_'d been there. Clearing his throat at her. Rustling his paper in his big meaty hands: she and Anna could hardly speak. Couldn't touch. His nose had been shiny and his glasses crooked and Anna had given him the first slice of cake although Villanelle had been her invited guest. Oksana. Bright little Oksana had been her invited guest. In front of her, now, Anna was telling the kid to leave the room.

"No," Villanelle said. "Irina, you stay. This is an example of someone who thinks they can shoot a gun but they can't. You're safe."

"I can," said Anna. "I will shoot your black heart."

And how that child Oksana had panted after every glance. Every touch. How she had sat in her little desk, elbows bruised from how hard she'd pressed them to the moulded plastic, watching Anna's mouth as she'd said _brûler_; _grelotter_. Villanelle had done both on command. _You taught me the word cliché_, Villanelle thought of saying; _I learned it from you_. But it wasn't important, now. 

"Where is Eve's phone number?" she said, instead; but Anna just kept the shaking gun on her and _boredom_ clicked back down in Villanelle's chest. Closing like a window-shutter, after just a few minutes in the air and the sun. 

"I can do it," Anna insisted. Half a minute more of going on about the gun and Villanelle would wander around the room. That old portrait, in its frame. The same remembered colours on the walls which had thrilled her, once. Now she thought: maybe something more interesting is happening in the street outside, as inside Anna's lip quivered.

"What would God say?" Villanelle asked, mocking. 

And Anna: "He would understand." 

_Ridiculous_, thought Villanelle. So _serious_; the woman couldn't always have been so serious. Hadn't she used to be—warm; glamorous? Something unknown; and now—and on top of it all her arm must be getting tired. A handgun was heavier than most people realised. And unless Anna had practiced… but she hadn't. She hadn't trained. You could tell by the way she held herself that she'd never had a real lesson, or shot at a target. If late at night she'd taken the gun out of its drawer and touched it, loaded and unloaded it, taken it apart and put it back together, stood with it in front of her mirror, then she hadn't actually aimed and shot at anything; and certainly she had never held it, as Konstantin had made Villanelle do, perfectly steady ten minutes at a time until her whole arms burned hot but the barrel, still, did not waver.

"Well," Villanelle said, "what would He say about doing it front of _her_?" 

"I don't mind," said Irina, who really was Konstantin's daughter, the little shit. 

"Shut up," Villanelle told her, but kept her eyes on Anna. Anna whose own eyes were filling: _still_. Incredible. Anna who would have pulled the trigger minutes ago if she were going to; yet here the two of them remained, standing looking at each other. Uselessly. 

"You see?" Villanelle told her. "You can't do it." 

Tears, sliding from Anna's eyes at last. Her triceps must be burning. Villanelle shrugged. 

"You can't," she said; and Anna, at last, lowered the gun. 

"You're right," she said. She put the gun down on the coffee table; rummaged in the pocket of her sweater. Brought out a—what? A cigarette lighter. And a scrap of paper, torn on two sides. 

"You're right," Anna said, again. "I can't do it. But—I can. Do this." 

It wasn't a _snap_, in Villanelle's head; but with a soft swelling she was—more here. More _à sa place_, because Eve must have. Eve must have sat next to Anna in this flat. Must have taken a pen from her. Must have written out her number, and then with her small, gesturing hands with their bitten hangnails pulled up the edge of the paper until it tore. Changed the angle, to make a little corner. Messy, and imprecise. 

"So _dramatic_," Villanelle said. Her heart beat, hard, but she rolled her eyes. Said, "What about your phone?"

"Didn't put her number in it," said Anna. "I've only got—just this."

Absurd, Villanelle thought; and then: possible. 

"She has _your_ information," she said; but Anna shook her head. Standing there, cheeks blotchy from crying, holding a little flame under a scrap that Eve with her ink-stained fingers had torn out of an exercise book. Villanelle remembered writing in those little books. Did they have them in London? Connecticut? Anna's lighter flickered closer. 

"I heard it will blow up if you leave it lit like that," Villanelle said. "Do you think that's true?" 

"I only took hers," Anna said. Her voice trembling. 

"Oooh, do you want to find out?" Grinning. Her mouth dry. "Do you think it would burn your arm?" 

"I didn't give her mine," Anna said, and brought the flame closer to the paper. 

"Come on," Villanelle said, biting off the words and she had to move: broke their stare and walked over to the table. Pulled out a chair. She thought of Eve, sitting here: had she rolled up her shirt-sleeves? Had Anna served her food? Had she eaten it? Had Anna showed her—Villanelle sat down and picked up the sugar spoon on the table: clink. Cli-clink. Said, "She can trace you through the school; she knows where you live. She'll find you." 

"You're going to wait?" Anna said.

"Maybe."

"Here?" 

"_Maybe_," said Villanelle, but she got up again from the chair. Snapped at Irina, "What are you looking at?" then wiped her mouth. Dirt on the back of her hand. "What are you—doing?" she said, to Anna. "What do you want, what are you asking?" 

Anna's swallow was visible from across the room. 

"You're going to meet her," Anna said. "And you're going to—bring this child." 

"Yes?" Villanelle's ass pressed to the window-ledge; the cold of the outside air seeping through the glass and along her spine. Her shoulders. Into the flesh of her back. Had Eve taken off her coat? Had she pulled back her hair?

"What are you going to do?" Anna said. 

"I don't—"

"When you _meet_ her." Anna's voice climbed; broke. Mouth open; messy mascara tracks; suddenly she suddenly looked—_mad_, Villanelle thought, in a way she hadn't used to. More burning than dull. She flicked the lighter again, just near the torn edge of Eve's scrap. Her hands, Villanelle saw, were steady, now. "What are you going to _do_ when you get there?" 

"I'm going to do my job," Villanelle told her. "And get my stuff back." 

"With this child as a hostage," Anna said. 

Irina shifted on the couch and Villanelle. Laughed, a bit. Looking between the two of them.

"Yes," she said. "With this child as hostage. I have a—_business meeting_ with her father, and he will come because he—" 

"Take me instead." 

"—wants to keep her—what?" said Villanelle. "No!" 

But she was surprised. She was actually surprised; Anna had surprised her; and she'd thought—well, fine, okay: it was a dull surprise. Only a surprise because she hadn't realized how far a person could go in their, what to call it, _professional commitment_, but. Off-balance, the lurch of sudden remembering: Anna had known her, once. It seemed incredible but when she had—when she had glowed for Anna. When every moment spent with Anna had burned itself in images, dug like ticks down deep under her skin. Madame Leonova had taken the young Oksana out into the city one Saturday, just weeks after she'd arrived, when already she could hardly breathe in Anna's presence and: a ride in a taxi. Tea and cakes. The tallest building she'd ever seen with Anna straightening Oksana's collar, lecturing her on Art Nouveau as they walked up the last stairs to the roof and then Anna had taken her hands and spun around with her. Spinning. She'd let go and Oksana had stumbled toward the edge and Anna had called to her to stop but she hadn't stopped her. They'd looked down together from the whirling edge of the world. 

"He won't know," Anna was saying. "He won't know she isn't with us until he gets there. And you will still have a hostage, won't you." 

Konstantin would say to list her options. Risk versus reward; but Villanelle wasn't the deliberating kind. 

"Sorry, Irina," she said. "No cakes for you."

"Hey!" said Irina; as Villanelle, over her, to Anna: "I guess you won't call Eve while I'm watching. I'll tie up the kid in the other room; go talk to your friend. Tell her I'm pointing a gun at you; that I'm taking you out to tea. Tell her the Kafe Radozhny in twenty minutes. Tell her not to be late."  
  
  


### 2\. THE MAGAZINE

**Wednesday, 15:30**  
**Kafé Radhozny**

At the Kafé Radhozny Anna sat at a table with Oksana, who was not dead. She could not believe what she had done and she could not believe what she was going to do: she had to stop herself thinking about it, except around the edges. They ordered tea and little cakes. They talked, like two women-friends out in the city. 

"So?" Oksana said. She slurped her tea. Smiled a wide smile: she found herself charming. "How is work? The school?"

"Same as it always was," Anna said, watching the door. "Kiryanov was fired." 

Oksana gasped, theatrically. "Monsieur Kiryanov!" She clicked her tongue. Leaned over to take a cake. "My goodness," she said. Her pink tongue, licking into the frosting. "Goodness."

"He was fucking one of the students," said Anna.

"Good for Monsieur Kiryanov." 

"Her mother found out."

"Tsk. Not so good for Monsieur Kiryanov." Oksana put on a pout like a tragedy mask; then swapped it out for a bright comedy-smile instead. "Lucky for you my mother was already dead."

A commotion by the entryway: Eve Polastri, with a gun, and—that man. The man who had come to Anna's flat, in another life or the start of this one, to lie to her that Oksana was dead. Anna stood, not knowing what she should—and Eve and the man came to a stop in the entryway, staring at her: all three of them frozen for the half-second it took Oksana to get to her feet. 

"Where's Irina?" the man said, and at the same moment: a hard thudding impact against Anna's back. Against her temple, the cold metal of Oksana's gun. Against her shoulderblades the heat of Oksana's breasts. All around them, diners in tea-dresses and sweater-sets dove for the floor; under tables. Anna swallowed.

"That's right, ladies!" Oksana called out, from next to Anna's right ear. "A woman could die." 

Through the commotion Anna lost sight of Irina's father and of Eve. A frosted cake splattered to the floor by her right foot. In front of her a young mother clutched her daughter to her chest: a girl of five, perhaps six. 

"Please stop moving or I will shoot someone," Oksana said, into the crowd. "I swear I am desperate." 

"Where is Irina?" said Eve. She had the gun trained on Oksana and Oksana had hers pointed right back. Against her spine Anna could feel Oksana shift. Soften. Lean forward as if pulled. 

"That suits you," Oksana said, over Anna's right shoulder; and. Anna knew that tone. 

"Just tell me where Irina is," said Eve. A half-step forward. "Tell me where she is and we can work all this out." Another half-step; Oksana's gun shoulder rolling forward. They were inching toward each other across the wide marble floor, eyes locked over Anna's shoulder with Anna just a body in between and Anna closed her eyes. Opened them. 

"She is safe," Anna said. 

She spoke directly to Eve, in the voice she used with parents of children in crisis. Eve's eyes came off Oksana and onto Anna, her forehead wrinkling up and her mouth—

"For now," Oksana said. Her voice had gone shrill. Her arm firmed against Anna's chest and her whole body went _tight_, like a crying-out, as Eve blinked at Anna. "Konstantin," said Oksana, "Irina is _really_ annoying." 

"I know," the man said. Rough-voiced. "Villanelle. Where is she?" 

"You want to know that, now?" said Oksana, snapping; and her torso swivelled against Anna's back so fast Anna gasped. That—_attention_ of hers. Like playing catch with a bullet, Anna'd used to think, and swallowing, swallowing: either you were either struck by it and ripped apart or left untouched, utterly: frozen, alone, only wanting—

"Tell us what you want," said Eve. 

"Him," said Oksana. Her voice vibrated against Anna's back; her neck. Anna shut her eyes, hard; then opened them. 

"You can have me," said Konstantin. "Just tell us what you've done with my daughter."

"I've got your passport," Eve said, her voice climbing but Oksana didn't look at her; Anna could feel that she didn't turn. "And your cash. Let go of Anna, tell us where Irina is, and I'll give them to you." 

"Throw it," Oksana said. Her position hadn't changed. She was looking at him and the man Konstantin was looking back at her. Hands outstretched at his sides. 

"Who's your favourite?" Oksana said. 

"What?" he said. 

"Me," said Oksana, "or your little girl?"

"I will," Eve shouted, sounding—desperate now, pleading; and Oksana wavered, Anna felt it: the edges of her pulled out of tension but Konstantin didn't. His cheek spasmed, just a bit, but his eyes stayed locked on Oksana's and when Oksana's body shivered back together her gun was still trained on him. 

"It's me, isn't it?" she asked him. A hard smile in her voice. "A little bit?" 

A twitch, at the corner of his mouth. He _liked_ her, Anna thought. Really liked Oksana. And Eve, still standing there with the gun in her hand like Anna had stood with a gun in hers. Mouth open; cheeks hollowing; eyes shot through with—Anna took a deep breath. There was no smile trying to work its way onto Eve's face. 

"Yes," Konstantin said, to Oksana; as Eve said, "I will; I'll throw it to you, as soon as you—"

"_Throw it_," Oksana shouted; and Eve flinched but she stepped _forward_; "Throw it," Konstantin told her, and her hand moved, pulling back with the paper packet in its little plastic—

"Don't," Anna said. 

Her heart. Would choke her; her; her heart.

"Shut up," said Oksana, shoving the gun against Anna's head.

"She is only keeping me alive because I'm her link to you," Anna said. She was looking right at Eve; Eve looked back. Hand at her side; eyes open and her mouth. "If you give her the documents she'll kill me." 

"_Shut up_." 

"And she will probably kill the girl, too."

"I am going to kill you _now_," said Oksana. Shoved the gun hard against Anna's temple and Anna shivered as all through her skin, at the back of her neck, she could feel it: the full weight of Oksana's attention collapsing back onto her, onto _them_, the two of them for a moment locked together, wild dog with her teeth out fastened on the back of some stumbling beast until Konstantin—

"Villanelle." 

—stepped forward. Drew Oksana's gun and Anna. 

Breathed.

She was trembling. Against her back was Oksana trembling? She probably didn't. Not anymore. Eve stood just behind Konstantin's left shoulder breathing hard with a starving look all over her face, not so much as glancing at Anna, her whole upper body pointing toward Oksana like a compass needle and she would be. You could almost see the tremor, watching the gun in her outstretched hand.

"Thank you," Konstantin said. "For my daughter."

Oksana's arm, tight around Anna's shoulders. A small wet noise, in her throat.

"I _like_ her," she told him. Her voice. She was—she was a woman now, Anna thought. At the same time, she was Oksana, breathing hot damp breath on Anna's neck. 

"Me too," said Konstantin. His hands spread open: the slightest gesture: his arms. 

Oksana's exhaled once, hard. Her whole ribcage jerked with it. That was all the movement Anna felt but Eve saw something because with a half-step forward—

"You know we've never had sex?" Oksana said. Too loud, and the direction of her voice: she must have turned her head though the gun stayed square on Konstantin. Her voice gone tight. "I mean," she said. "Me and him." She gestured toward Konstantin, with the gun. And then at once her shoulders and biceps went _hard_-iron-cruel; leaning rough into Anna's shoulder with her forearm cinching up tight against Anna's throat. Anna's mouth came open but no br-_eath_; awful sounds. Choking.

"Let go of Anna," Eve said, "I'll give you your documents." 

"Weird," said Oksana. Far away. "Don't you think?" 

"I'm married," said Konstantin, and Anna, her eyes shutting, could feel Oksana laughing against her back. Don't struggle, she thought. Don't struggle. Don't fight. 

"Oksana," Eve said, and Oksana breathed out, hard, clenching still further; gun still on Konstantin with Eve holding up the documents, saying, "Let Anna—"; as Konstantin said again, "Villanelle"—

"You're a good person," Oksana said. "A good _father_. I think." 

Her arm tightened even more; something cracked in Anna's neck and Anna. Couldn't hear; couldn't. Breathe. Burning. Tight, burning, don't struggle waited for blackness but it, it loosened. Just enough for a trickle. Of air. In the distance, a siren, cutting through the roaring in Anna's ears.

"But I have to do my job," Oksana was saying to Konstantin. "And you understand that." And then—

Air and gravity in a rush and the jerk of the recoil. Anna sagged coughing most of the way to the floor before she was _jerked_ back up; a jolting-tearing in her shoulder: pulled to her feet between Oksana and Eve's gun. She shook her head to clear her eyes, and the tea-room wavered back to her. Fuzzy at the edges; her raw throat. To their left Konstantin bled from his gut on the floor. 

"Throw it," Oksana said. Hot metal at Anna's temple: she cried out, then coughed. Oksana held her in place. 

"Let her go," Eve said. "Come with me." 

The tiny noise Oksana made. _Yearning_; too quiet for Eve to have heard. The siren, louder outside. Oksana's body coiled tight against Anna's body, like she could push _through_ her. Eve's tight face. 

"Give me my stuff," Oksana said; as Eve said: "Please. Just you and me." 

They stood there, for a long moment. Eve's wild mane and her open begging mouth; the documents outstretched in her hand. Anna could barely stand to watch. Could almost see Oksana's face reflected in her deep brown eyes and then Oksana—shifted—

—and Anna was being pulled down the steps, out into the street in front of the cafe, then pushed down an alley, and down another, not speaking, slowing to a brisk walk back to Tverskaya, still held close against Oksana, gun to her back.  
  
  


### 3\. THE ESCAPEMENT

**Wednesday, 17:45**  
**The Flat on Tverskaya Ploshchad**

Crashing through Anna's front door. Tugging on the ropes that tied the girl, Konstantin's daughter, his real daughter; Irina's little fists coming up as soon as her hands were free but Villanelle left the gag tied around her head until she'd dragged her most of the way to the door. As soon as it was off the kid started cursing her. Villanelle blinked and saw Konstantin, bleeding on the floor; blinked and saw Eve, saying _Just the two of us_. Saying: _Please_. 

"Get out," she told Irina. She pushed her through the door; Irina went. 

"We can fix it," Anna said, as soon as the door clicked; and Villanelle turned—

"We!" she said. 

Anna lifted her chin. "I will help you," she said. "I will call her. I will—"

"_Don't throw it_," Villanelle parroted. She felt her teeth grind together. Her jaw clench. Anna was backing toward the sofa, toward Maxi's old chair with his stupid cushion; she was going because Villanelle was making her. Crowding her back. "_Oh, she'll kill me, oh_—"

Anna half-tripped; Villanelle smiled. 

"I'm the one," Anna said. "I'm the only one with her number. I burned the paper, I—I. Now it's only in my head." 

"_Oh, she seduced me_," Villanelle went on, "_she'll kill me_." Her hip rubbed against the desk, and she grabbed at random from Anna's fussy little desktop with all her supplies, everything just so, everything in _place_; the fucking pens and envelopes and stapler neat and tidy where once on the floor in this room Villanelle had fucked her so hard and so sweetly that Anna'd reached out for _anything_, _begging_ her; fingers scrabbling at the area rug and the chair-leg and then arms over her head pulling out a drawer just enough to hold to the frame of the desk and cry out and cry out and jolt so hard all through her body that pen-nibs and paper clips rained down on them; stuck to their skin; lodged in Anna's hair _she seduced me_. Villanelle shot her palm along the desktop to fasten on smooth plastic and a metal blade. She clenched her fingers and they ground together against her palm. 

She pushed forward. Anna had her hands out walking backward, holding Villanelle back like she'd never done to Oksana; but enough had done it to Villanelle, in the years since. 

"Oksana," Anna said; and Villanelle said, "Mmm?" and shouldered forward. When Anna sat hard in the armchair, Villanelle followed her down. Straddled her lap. Hand tight around its contents: "_She'll kill the kid_," parroting back at her, still in that sing-song voice. "_Don't give her anything, don't give her what she wants_"; and—

"I like her," Anna said. A sudden stillness about her: hands on the chair's arm-rests, face tipped up to Villanelle. 

"—what?" Villanelle said. "Who?" 

"Eve," said Anna. 

The edge of a sharp blade, squeezed tight into the meat of Villanelle's palm. 

Anna said, "I can tell she is a good person."

Villanelle could—felt she was—split between two worlds, with—blind-white bodyless nothing opening up between them so she loomed over her. Spine curled over Anna's dowdy buttoned cardigan and her turtleneck and her out-of-date jeans. She dug knees hard as she could into the sides of Anna's thighs and Anna gazed up at her. Blinked. 

"You think so?" said Villanelle, rushing in her ears. "You talked to her for—for twenty minutes." 

"When you help people," Anna said. "You—for years now, at the school, I've helped people, I've been trying to—"

Sharp wetness, in her hand. Far away Anna was talking; Villanelle was. Quiet. Static-cushioned her vision narrowed to her open palm thick-lipped with red around an old letter-opener: long silver blade. Fussy curlicues at the hilt and a finial whose polished medallion held a picture: sepia-faded grey-green watercolor of a tank. _And if you do it for long enough—_, Anna was saying, as Villanelle thought of—Anna's mother, probably. Or her father. Slitting open their letters to the reminder of the Five Year Plan; onward progress; Soviet military might and Villanelle queasy wanted to _laugh_ as Anna was saying—

"—you get a sense."

Snugged up against the letter opener was a plastic fountain pen. Gold cap; teal-colored clear plastic barrel. The cartridge half-used. 

"Such a helper you are," Villanelle murmured. And then _sharp_ with her clean hand she reached to tangle fingers in Anna's hair and drag her head back—_back_—top of her spine stretched arching over the chair-back, pulled further than it wanted to go. Anna gave a little grunt, and Villanelle felt. Inching back inside herself. Pain inside her hard-clenched hand. 

"You think you're some kind of saint," she said. Anna gurgled. Between Villanelle's knees, Anna's hips—shifted, thighs pressed tight together. Anna opened her mouth to speak so Villanelle pulled harder on her hair. 

"Not," Anna got out, "a saint." 

Villanelle let go her hair and slapped her left-handed across the face. The pen and the letter-opener still dug into her right palm. 

"Not a saint?" she said. 

She was breathing hard. Could hear—and Anna's pinked-up cheek. Her quivering chin. Villanelle drip-flooding back into her arm and her chest made a mocking, pouting noise, a cooing-baby noise, sticking out her lip. Anna breathed—_in_. Held it. Met her eyes. 

The pen had a clip on the lid; Villanelle fastened it to the neck of her shirt. Turned the little blade in her hand: the smooth cold of the tank pressed up against her wrist. _Not a saint_, she thought, and felt like—cutting into something. 

"Will you stop me, then," she said, "doing this?" and with her left hand in a fist around the neckline of Anna's cardigan she slid the opener between the two cardigan-fronts, the flat of the blade pressed up against Anna's chest through her blouse. Anna breathed up at her. Lifted her sternum, and Villanelle sliced _down_, slow, _hard_, pulling up with her fist to get enough force that the dull blade cut through thread. _Snick_. _Snick_. _Snick_, and the soft _tink_ of each button hitting the floor. Anna didn't look down. "Such a helper," Villanelle said again, under her breath; and Anna in her schoolteacher voice said, "I'm helping _you_." 

Villanelle twisted her wrist just—just enough to remind Anna about the point of the blade; just enough to press it against her belly. Anna's breath changed and her chest moved quicker but she let her. 

"It would have _helped_ to get my documents back," Villanelle said. Her face close to Anna's face. Her fist over Anna's heart. She slid the blade down _snick_ and the last button _tink_ and then pulled the cardigan down and back, off her shoulders; pulling Anna's arms back and her shoulders back and her head forward so that she winced, _shoulder pain_, Villanelle thought, _she's getting older_, but Anna didn't stop her. Villanelle had to shift her weight half-off the chair to put her mouth by Anna's ear. Bit the lobe, hard: Anna gasped. "It would have helped," Villanelle told her, "to get my money back." 

"I can talk to Eve," Anna said. She ran it together like all one word. "I know what to say, I. Eve—Eve helps people, too." 

Anna was on the floor. Villanelle half outside herself had shoved her to the floor and without her hands to catch her Anna fell hard on her side. Villanelle scrambled down. Pin her. Hands trapped under her, Villanelle's weight on her hips. Villanelle yanked her blouse up out of her jeans. Blade pressed hard to her soft belly: softer than Villanelle remembered and she let it _dig in_, _nick_, _puncture_ flesh and then she. Anna holding herself still, under her. Those curls, half in focus, a cloud around her face on the floor. Eyes on Villanelle's eyes, welling up, while dry as anything Villanelle—breathed; and then breathing she sat up in her hips just enough to tuck the letter opener into her back pocket. Unclipped the pen from her shirt. In the quiet of the flat it made a _shink_ sound when she slid off the cap. 

"The people Eve is helping," Villanelle said. Conversational. "Do you think she fucks them with her fist in the afternoons?"

"I can go to her," Anna said. "Offer her information. She will talk to me." 

"Hm." Villanelle pushed Anna's shirt further up; jerked her bra down so her tits spilled out over the top of the lace and the wire. Those freckles that Villanelle had used to—"When her husband isn't home," Villanelle said, "and their handlers are drunk." Left hand holding steady Anna's left breast; with her right drawing ink bright blue along the freckled skin. _Madame Leonova_, she wrote, _Helper_; and she asked, as tears made silent tracks down Anna's temples, into her hair: "Do you think she puts her tongue up their little cunts?" 

"Tell her," Anna said. Her voice came out clogged. Villanelle held her face; drew on her cheek a broken Valentine heart. Jagged lightning-bolts through the centre. She made the perfect little sides of it mirror each other and then she let go Anna's hair and slapped her again: her head twist-jerking back on her neck. Smeared ink with tears and sweat, and under it her cheek, pinking up. 

When Anna stopped gasping she said, "An exchange. Information."

"When they're really clever," said Villanelle. "And really pretty. And they have—a crush." Anna whimpered and Villanelle hit her again then—moved down, half-off her, yanked open her jeans and. Shoved her wrong hand down the front of them, which was all Anna deserved. The tank was back in Villanelle's hand; where the pen had gone she didn't know but what would she've written about how _wet_—so she pressed the blade up under Anna's throat. Anna making breathy little _noises_ like she was _enjoying_ this. 

"When they're just _begging_ her to take an interest in their lives," Villanelle said, and started—pressing. Hard _in_, slide. "Do you think she stuffs them from both ends with, oh, whatever she has in the house, before she sends them away to prison?" Anna's knees came up. Feet on the floor to press her hips—_up_, and Villanelle _shoving_, "Do you think," was saying, "she teases them before she turns them in? Maybe works them through a list of verb conjugations before she lets them come?" 

"I think she is a good person," Anna said. Her wet, red face. Her wet cunt and her gasping mouth and _good person good person_ still all she'd bloody say. Half Villanelle's hand in her and she closed her eyes and sobbing said, "I can tell she is a good person."

"_Subjonctif, présent_," said Villanelle. Blade at Anna's throat fingers shoving into the hot wetness of her and Anna was making noises like something was being ripped apart deep in her throat as Villanelle said, "_Que je puisse, Madame_," pressing down, nicking the skin under Anna's jaw, "_que tu puisses_, _qu'elle puisse_, _que nous puissons, Madame_," half-punching; Anna biting her lip and taking it and taking it and Villanelle: "_que vous puissiez_," following Anna's head up when she tried to twist away from the blade to keep it pressed firm as she fucked her, "_oh j'espère qu'elles puissent_" tears in tracks through the smeared blue on her face as her body trembled—trembled, "_est-ce que vous pouvez, Madame? Pouvez-vous, avec cette chose là_—"

Anna bit her lip, and shook. After, Villanelle yanked her hand out; wiped it on Anna's rucked-up blouse. Then she got off her. Spit on the floor, as Anna rolled over onto her side to free her hands. Villanelle went to the kitchen for a cup of something. 

She stood at the sink. Sipped black tea and looked at the tank on the finial of the letter opener, which was rolling through a forest, a soldier popping out of its top hatch.

Anna came in, all fastened back up; her eyes puffy and her swollen cheeks red. "Your face is a mess," Villanelle told her.

Anna put a hand on her wrist and Villanelle _jerked_ and. "This is really funny," she told Anna. Shoving the medallion at her. "Look at the little man." 

"Information on the Twelve," Anna said. "For your documents. Let me make amends."

Villanelle shook her off. At the sink she ran the water. Washed her hands. 

"Fine," she said. "Whatever. Do what you want."  
  
  


### 4\. THE ASSEMBLER

**Thursday, 8:00**  
**Hotel Metropol**

"So," Eve said. She pushed the silver creamer across the table, but Anna shook her head. Looking around, so—they were so exposed, right out in public. The hotel bar was mostly empty this early in the day.

"Thank you for meeting me," she said. 

"Yeah. Well." Eve's fingers tapped-tapped the table next to her coffee. "We don't normally get a negotiation attempt from the hostage." She sat there, looking at Anna; Anna looked back. After a while Eve stirred herself; shifted the cross of her legs. "Were you, ever? I mean, to begin with?" 

"What?" Anna said; and then—"The hostage," Eve said; at the same time Anna, realising, said, "What? Yes."

"Hm." Eve sipped at her coffee. Sipped. 

Anna ripped open a sugar packet; the _shhhh_ of the grains against the paper as she dumped them into her cup. She let the sound continue, in her own mind: a soft steady susurration over all the pounding in her skin and her head and the things she wasn't thinking. 

"Well, I'm equipped to get you out of here right now," Eve told her. "Plain-clothes security at the back entrance; an unmarked car. Twenty-four hour guards up to and past any trial that may result. We can protect you from her. If that's what you want." 

Anna stirred: a dark clockwise vortex. "You couldn't," she said. Shook her head. "She would find me."

"Because she's really that good?" Eve sat forward. "Or because you would tell her where you were?"

"She's. She would." Anna cleared her throat. 

"I mean, usually," said Eve, "in a situation where one party is being held against their will, their captor does not release them with the expectation they'll come back. So why don't you just—help me understand." 

A loud clatter at the bar entrance; Anna jumped. Eve did not. A leggy young twenty-something hung off the arm of a bear-like youth in an unzipped parka. She stumbled; he caught her. Laughing. Banging his fist on the bar. Anna thought about Oksana's rising voice, as she pointed her gun at Eve while Eve looked at Anna. Thought about her taunting her, Anna's shoulder digging into the floor which she hadn't minded, not really. Not even barely felt, after everything. Her heart was picking up more now, sitting here, stirring her coffee. 

"You think I manipulated you," she said, in a lower voice. "At Kafé Radhozny." 

Eve snorted. "I. Think that's pretty clear. Yeah."

"You don't know—what she's like, I." Anna breathed. Made words come up through her narrowing throat: she had to; she could. "The child, yes, but. What she did to me. What she did to. To Maxi." Her hand came up to cover her mouth. The still-drunk kids at the bar: tossing down shots now, half in each other's laps and so young. All the nights before she'd got what she wanted when she'd lain dreaming what she'd say and now—she remembered it all. Forced her hand back down. "Every day I've lived with—with what happened," she told Eve, whom Oksana loved. "And it was never over. When I heard she was in prison, then when I heard she was dead, I thought—but not even then. It wouldn't end. There was nothing I could do to _make_ it end, and now I don't. I don't want to—live out of hotels, with a bodyguard; I don't want." She took a breath. "I don't want this life in which everything reminds me of—them, of h-him. Of what—_happened_, I want. Another life. A new place, a new self, for—" 

The waiter appeared, at their elbows. Eve sipped her coffee, looking at Anna; Anna twisted her napkin in her hands. She was very conscious of the feel of it, slightly rough, slightly hot against her palms like her breath hot in the back of her throat. The abrasiveness of small details: the white towel in the waiter's black apron. The fine nap of the lavender-velvet upholstery on the high-backed tea-room chairs. A plate of powder-dusted ponchik: _clink_ onto the little wooden table. 

"Thank you," said Eve. Anna didn't say anything, or meet his eyes. He withdrew. 

"Well," Eve said, "I'm sure you're aware that no one on my side is going to offer you witness protection just for having coffee with me and asking for Villanelle's—Oksana's—documents back. Honestly I'm not sure what I can get you anyway; they're not too happy with me right now. I'd have to offer them something… better. A lot better."

"Information," Anna said, at once. "I can get you surveillance on Oksana, and the Twelve." 

"As reported by you? A probable collaborator from the beginning?" 

Anna slurped at her coffee. The cloying scent of the ponchik; Eve ready to send her away and Anna's stomach like a lead fist.

"I'd—go back," she told her. "It's my flat, anyway. I'd wear an earpiece; you could listen in. Hear everything, hear what happened, between. Her and me. You'd decide." She swallowed. "You'd decide when we were done. When you. Had enough."

Eve shifted in her seat; reached forward for a pastry. She bit into it, watching Anna; her face—sharpening; brightening; though you couldn't say which of her features might have moved. She was thinking about it, then; thinking it through as she chewed; swallowed: about what Anna might say to Oksana while Eve listened. What Oksana might say when they were alone. Her coffee was behind her elbow now but she hadn't sat back. She took another bite of the ponchik and then put it down, almost missing her plate. Finger-smears of powdered sugar on the black serviette. A small glob of custard on her lower lip. 

"You have something," Anna said, touching her own mouth; and Eve, reaching for the cloth, wiping, impatient—

"She's staying with you?" 

"Yes," Anna said, and again she could breathe. 

"Indefinitely?" 

"She didn't give me much choice."

"And she's—does she want to resume your previous relationship?" 

Anna's mouth twisted, but she didn't smile: as if embarrassed, her hand came up to her neck. The place under her jaw. On a man, the marks there might be taken for nicks from a razor instead of souvenirs of Oksana and a letter opener but: Eve's eyes, widening. Her tongue, darting out. Wetting her lower lip. 

"Not exactly—resumed," Anna told her. "Things are different now. But."

Eve's coffee cup _clanked_. Loud enough on the tabletop that the waiter looked around, and scowled at them. Anna gave him the little smile she'd kept to herself earlier, and when she turned back Eve was sitting forward, elbows on her knees. Still staring at Anna's neck. 

"The microphone is very inconspicuous," Eve said. She didn't even bother to meet Anna's eyes. "We can incorporate it into a piece of jewelry, a headband, something, but you'll still have to be careful. She knows what to look for. And if you come back tonight, with no documents and no deal—"

"I'll say you need to negotiate. That you are not convinced."

"Hell," Eve said, and snorted, "say I'm convinced, but I've been fired." At that she looked away, at last, from Anna, toward the couple at the bar. The girl's long hair in her eyes; his hand on her ass. Eve rubbed her face. "I have to talk to some people." 

"All right," said Anna. "That's worth a few days." 

Eve laughed. "You might be overestimating how willing my former bosses are to talk to me." But she was darting glances back at Anna's face; and below. Tapping her fingers on the table; Anna's chest filling up with something bright and burning and pure. "Anyway," Eve said. Pushing herself to her feet. "They left me with enough gear that you and I can rig something up."  
  
  


### 5\. THE MATRICES

**Thursday, 19:04**  
**The Flat on Tverskaya Ploshchad**

After the half-hour Villanelle had spent hovering in the service door to the Metropol kitchen watching Anna and Eve sitting chatting across from each other at a table in the bar, she'd followed Anna following Eve upstairs, where the door to Eve's room had clicked shut behind them and they'd stayed for—an hour. Longer. Long enough that Villanelle, pacing the hall, had started thinking she could—kick the door in. Grab a uniform off a hotel maid; show up with Champagne and a knife, or. Go the other way: scale the building from the outside. Eve was sloppy; on the sixth floor she wouldn't bother to shut the curtains. Villanelle could snug up next to the flower pots; peer around a corner to where the bed stretched out, clean and white; she'd have a front-row seat for—but before she could do any of it she'd had her own visitor. A red-blond goon from the Twelve had kept her busy the rest of the morning; most of the afternoon. They'd had a chase, quite scenic: through the park; along the river. A museum or two; a drop from a bridge onto a passing barge. She'd have enjoyed it if she hadn't kept thinking the whole time of that closed door; the windows behind. Everything in between. 

By the time she'd shaken him off, left him hobbled on the wrong side of the river, it was early evening and she ached. Buzzed. The place she'd fallen all along her right hip and her thigh would bruise up tomorrow but for now it just felt hot; tender to the touch. When she got back to the flat Anna was in the kitchen, sectioning a whole sturgeon for ukha. She looked up when Villanelle came in; then back down at her cutting board: the cleaver came down and the fish head flopped free. Was tossed in the stockpot. Villanelle turned, and went to shower. 

By the time she wandered back out into the main room, wrapped in Anna's robe, the stock was simmering on the stove, and Anna was chopping potatoes for the soup. Their slick interiors glistened, exposed, in the bowl under the light of the kitchen overhead, next to the little containers of carrot and flesh cubes and dill, and a flipped-open notebook. Villanelle would still recognise Anna's handwriting anywhere. Anna looked up, and met her eyes. 

"Where have you been all afternoon?" she said, dropping cubes of potato into the bowl. She actually smiled a little, at Villanelle, and jerked her chin down at the notebook, which was—spun away from Anna, toward Villanelle. It wasn't a recipe, anyway. 

"Sightseeing," Villanelle told her, as she read: _I am wearing a microphone; she is listening._ "When they excavated Zaryadye there were arrows still stuck in the walls, did you know? For nine hundred years." 

Villanelle read: _She thinks I am still in love with you_, in Anna's neat hand, _but that I will inform on you in exchange for a new life._ _Thunk_, _thunk_ went the knife through the potatoes. "Yes," Anna said. "The children love the exhibit where you learn to load a gun."

_With enough time we could convince her you deserve one, too_, the note read. 

"Psht," said Villanelle. "I already know how to load a gun." 

Anna reached up a wrist; pushed a piece of hair back from her cheek, the knife still in her hand. "From the sixteen-hundreds?" she said. Her voice was light, teasing. Like they were lovers. Like they were standing here, _laughing_, alone in this flat: everything Oksana had wanted—and Eve, listening to every word they said. 

"Once you know the theory," Villanelle said, picking up Anna's pen, "it's not so hard to figure out the practice," writing: _What if I don't want a new life?_; pushing the pad back toward Anna, who snorted: half a laugh.

The last potato cubed and piled in the bowl, Anna's knife clicked handle-blade onto the work surface next to all the mismatched, hand-made mixing bowls holding the waiting ingredients. That misshapen little green-glazed ramekin, holding the dill: Villanelle remembered that one. They'd put—vinegar in it, for the pelmeni, the time Anna had offered to teach her how to make them. Maxi had been watching them the whole time so they'd kneaded; ground; chopped; chilled. By the end her jaw had ached from not leaning in; not touching; not saying—and then Anna had put vinegar in this ugly little dish, and Maxi had gotten out of his chair to come eat his part of their labor, bellying up to the table; and Villanelle had had to unclench her teeth long enough to swallow some down. And here it was, still: not a chip. If it wasn't for Anna, Villanelle thought; if it wasn't for the fleshiness around her chin; the new lines around her mouth and her eyes; if it wasn't for how hard the years had treated her and for Maxi's empty chair then a person would have thought the flat was under some kind of magic spell. That no time had passed, at all. That nothing had changed. 

"You're saying," said Anna, in that fond voice—that _teasing_ voice—as, pulling the pad toward herself, uncapping the pen: "that if someone gave you a seventeenth century, ah, I don't know. What did they have in the—"

"Flintlock musket?" Villanelle said, and: "How long does the stock have to wait, _daragaya_?" 

"—then you would. Know how to." Anna's breath: caught. She turned the page around but Villanelle didn't look down at it. She had come up around Anna's other side: was touching her face. Gentle. Like a lover. "Then you w-would know," Anna went on, "how to load it, how to—to fire it—" 

Her eyes had closed; Villanelle's fingertips on her cheek. Her lips. That stutter: was she such a good little liar, these days? Or was it for Eve? Villanelle thumbed open Anna's mouth; pulled down her bottom lip and hooked her thumb over Anna's jaw. Dragged it open. Reached in and felt Anna's tongue, with the pads of her fingers. _Affamée_, she thought, leaning in; pressing her body against Anna's body; and Anna's breath, harsh in Eve's ear. 

"Well," said Villanelle, into Anna's neck. The microphone would be hidden—where? Villanelle took Anna's bruised earlobe, gentle between her teeth; _sucked_ and Anna whimpered. "I _have_ killed dozens of people," she said. "My darling. Maybe two dozen with a gun. And you realise—it isn't so different." Little presses; nips. Anna was panting, and Villanelle thought: that's right. Pant for her. Moan for her, let her hear you: Anna had used to love every possible bit of her being sucked. Villanelle leaving patient bruises, nape to ankles with her mouth: let Eve hear how her mouth flooded. Let her hear how Villanelle could make her sound. And suckling, gentle at her collarbone, "You just do," she murmured, "what feels right." Anna shivered, full-body, silent until Villanelle bent her head to graze teeth over the top of Anna's breast through her cotton blouse, and Anna, on a little exhale, said, "Ohhhh." 

"The stock?" Villanelle said. 

"Another twenty minutes." Anna's voice was tight. She'd bit her lip. Face turned away from Villanelle; so Villanelle forced it back forward so she could lean forward and press light kisses to Anna's bottom lip; the corner of her mouth; she made them pillow-soft and _tender_ and _there_, she thought, _like that_ as Anna's body began to _melt_ toward her even as her voice caught on "Oks—sana." 

Villanelle swallowed. Carried on made herself be. So _gentle_ with her Anna's breath caught again—caught—"So beautiful," Villanelle murmured, "_belle à se damner_," kissing her neck; her jaw; hand at her waist, "_ma cherie_"; as Anna gasped; deep little cries in her throat; her hand coming up to cup the back of Villanelle's head and Villanelle: "your _hair_," said, grinning against her skin, "your gorgeous dark curls"; pressing her leg gentle between Anna's legs and the rhythm of her breath broke down and she sobbed. 

"Shhh," said Villanelle. Pressed Anna's lower back into the tile of the work surface; kissed her open mouth. "Oh shh, my love, you want it so badly? Hm?" 

"Bed," Anna said. Hiccuped. Behind her, the stock bubbled gently, and then—she pushed herself forward. Back to standing. Her arms came up around Villanelle's shoulders; her lips on Villanelle's lips soft-remembered and the smell of her; Villanelle let herself be backed away from the stove, toward the table and then. Anna's hand, scrabbling at the wood. Pushing between them. The notebook, pressed to Villanelle's heaving chest. Villanelle's fingers fastened around it and their breaths, loud in the silence. Villanelle kept her eyes on Anna. She didn't look down.

"Mmm. You want me to take you to bed?" Anna glanced, desperate, between Villanelle's face and the paper between them; Villanelle, unsmiling and with a quivering lip, widened her eyes. Reached out to undo the wrap on Anna's dress; the fabric fell open. "You want me to take you up to your bedroom?" she said. "Spread you out on your big bed?"

"I want you to look," said Anna. She grabbed for the notebook but Villanelle wrapped that arm around her waist. Paper held against the small of her back and they were hip to hip. Villanelle sweating, naked under Anna's heavy robe, and Anna, in her black lace bra. 

"Oh," Villanelle said, "I'm looking." She pulled Anna closer against her. Breathless: she didn't even have to fake it. 

"_Suka_," Anna said. "_Please_," panting up into Villanelle's mouth, one hand in her hair, the other clutching at her shoulders, "please, please," and then wasted her whole argument by pressing up, her _mouth_—

_Listen_, Villanelle thought, held fast in her body that was reaching out, pulsing out to a closed door at the Hotel Metropol and through it, beyond it, moaning against Anna's mouth for Eve sitting at her big glass window with her headphones and Villanelle hoped she was drinking, hard. She could have called room service with Villanelle's panting breaths in her ear; had them bring up a bottle while she tried not to touch herself until they arrived so that by the time they got there she was leaking down her own leg half-cross-eyed, slamming the door behind the waiter, tearing the foil off the bottle and her own skirt off her hips as Villanelle kissed Anna Leonova in her old kitchen like they were lovers; like they were starving; like they were young again the both of them. Like they'd be interrupted any minute but they hadn't been. Not yet. 

Anna moaning pulled back and Villanelle flashed for a second to Eve with her hand between her legs and vodka dripping down her chin before she looked down. Anna's hand on the notebook on her chest. 

"Please," Anna said; and so Villanelle—

—pushed her off her. Straightened her robe, and took the notebook out to the main room. The night-dark windows beyond the white scalloped-lace curtains. Still breathless, she sat. From the kitchen, eventually, came the sounds of vegetables and fish-flesh being dropped into the stock. Villanelle sat back against the cushions, and rubbed her face. After-flash images of Eve still burned against her eyelids, half-obscuring the notebook when she looked down at it, at last. 

_She wants to put you back in prison_, Anna had put down, in her careful way, before letting Eve hear her moan, and pant, and beg. _I want to help you, Oksana_, she had written. _I want to keep you safe._  
  
  


### 6\. THE SPACEBANDS

**Friday, 12:45**  
**Hotel Metropol**

"So based on that detail about Zaryadye, I followed up with security at the Underground Museum," Eve told Anna, scooting forward in her chair. She slid a couple of glossy photos toward Anna over the polished-wood table, and Anna sipped her coffee, her eyes grainy. She'd put in too much sugar. She always did when she hadn't slept. "They captured footage of this man," Eve said, pointing. "See, he arrived just after Oksana; and here he is again, leaving just a few seconds after she did." 

"That's him," Anna said. 

"That's—who?"

"There are pictures of him on Oksana's phone. I looked, when she was in the shower. She must have wanted to, I don't know. Run his face through some kind of, of, database. Like you types do." 

Eve sat back. Looked at her in that way she had, like Anna was in the way of what she really wanted to see. Still, Anna looked back at her. Drank her coffee; her head ached. 

"So she led him on this chase," Eve said. "Through the park, the archaeological museum; she stopped to, uh, read a plaque or two, apparently; and then led him off over—"

"Bolshoy Ustyinskiy," Anna said.

"Excuse me?" 

"The bridge," Anna explained. "Bolshoy Ustyinskiy, it was in the background of the pictures; they were on a—a boat. A barge." She rubbed her eyes, as Eve made notes. "She must have taken out his kneecaps, so he couldn't chase her anymore."

"Ah," said Eve. "But then—she didn't kill him?"

"She might have, after she took the pictures," Anna said, "but he was alive in those. Cursing her, I would guess." A warmth, in her chest. "I would guess she was laughing."

Eve smiled; then brought her hand up. Rested her chin on her hand to hide her mouth; and Anna had a sudden flash of—the night before, in the kitchen. And afterward, actually in bed, when Oksana—and Anna had. She had wanted—too much. She'd thought she didn't, anymore; she'd believed—and what if, she thought, bile rising in the back of her throat, after everything, after she couldn't go back—

"Pretty risky thing to do," Eve said; and Anna swallowed. Breathed. "Assuming this man is an agent of the Twelve. Unless—I suppose she could have been antagonising him deliberately. To distract him into carelessness, or—"

"She could have been," said Anna. "But I think…" 

She shook her head; her brain felt bruised. After everything, and even knowing about the wire, Oksana had dropped into unconsciousness and Anna had stayed next to her all night. Not sleeping; just watching. She had slept curled on her side, turned toward Anna; not touching, her thumb tucked into her half-closed fist. Everyone must look innocent in their sleep, Anna had thought. Everyone must look untested; unformed. Free from suffering. Free from harm. Anna, breathing, had listened to her breath. 

"What do you think?" Eve said. Anna blinked until her eyes came clear.

"I don't know," she said, slowly. Eve's hand was inching over toward her across the table, like she could tear some key anecdote out of Anna's chest by force. Anna could tell her—almost anything, couldn't she? Anything that would keep this going: regular meetings, Eve in her confidence. Eve inviting Anna in. Eve staring at a mark on Anna's neck, saying, _I have to talk to some people_. "I don't know," Anna said, again. "But when Oksana was a girl she never used to hesitate, she would only act. She would feel like… oh." 

"What?" 

"It doesn't matter," Anna said. 

"No," Eve said. Hand touching her own neck; lips never quite closing. "Tell me. Anything could be important."

Anna watched her salivate, cringing a little. Wanting to look away. A cavern opening up under—and she remembered the day Konstantin had come to tell her Oksana was dead; the day Eve had come to say she wasn't. Eve lowered her eyes, briefly, but she didn't manage to slow her breath.

"It was only an example," Anna said, thinking carefully of only what she was saying. "I would take her out in public when we were, were wild for each other. You know. But there were. So many reasons, why we had to be careful. None of it mattered to Oksana; she was crazy, she just—_wanted_, so she would take, and it was." She laughed. "It was insane, but also intoxicating. She would feel like—touching me, reaching for me, and she just—_would_; she would, she'd. Oh—put her hands under my clothes. Warm hands against my skin. Kiss my neck, my face; put her mouth—it was so stupid. So dangerous." She cleared her throat. "Oksana didn't care."

Eve was leaning toward her. Had pushed her chair closer to Anna's chair. Her mouth was slightly open. 

Anna said, "Now it seems like—I don't know. Either she is older, she is getting better at thinking things through…" 

"Or what?" 

"Or maybe she is losing interest," Anna said, flashing to Oksana's gun on her temple: cold, and later hot. "Maybe she is bored. I don't know. I don't know which is worse. I just remember how her body used to, to _yearn_ toward…" 

She shook her head. Eve sat with her legs spread, elbows on her knees. Chest rising-falling, for a long time she looked at Anna—or through Anna—the memories almost visible on her face, and Anna thought that if she kept talking at just the right tone, the right cadence, saying _Oksana_ and _wild_ and _skin_, then if she wanted to and if she were the kind of person to do such a thing then she might get on her knees right here in the bar of the Hotel Metropol and unzip Eve's trousers and put her hands on her and the woman would let her; but Anna wasn't that kind of person. She wasn't; she never had been, until—only—the yawning gaping—_cavern_, opening wide—

Eve shook herself. Sat up. 

"I want to offer you the location of a safehouse," she said. Rifled through papers. 

"Oh," Anna said. To her own ears she sounded breathless. Hardly human. "That's not necessary." 

"Well, don't use it then," Eve said, and handed her a card. "Procedure. Memorize it, and destroy it." 

Anna took the card; looked at it a long moment in which the characters refused to make themselves into any meaning, before she tucked it into her bag. "All right," she said. "Thank you"; and Eve nodded. 

They sipped their coffee. Anna closed her eyes. She knew what she was doing, she thought; and thought: the way Oksana's mouth moved in her sleep. 

"Anyway," she said, opening her eyes again, her balance more or less restored, "that man is definitely from the Twelve." She unlocked her phone; brought up a picture. Two shots of a postcard: on the front, Lenin's Mausoleum; on the back, a name and an address. _Semyon Muratov: 30 Michurinskiy Prospekt #40_. "He gave her her next assignment," Anna said. "At some point along the way."  
  
  
**Friday, 20:10**  
**The Flat on Tverskaya Ploshchad**

"I can see why you like her," Anna said. "She's—how to put it?" 

"Pass the peas," said Villanelle. She couldn't stop herself glancing up at Anna; giving Anna a little shake of her head but Anna wasn't even looking at her. Just sitting behind her food with this—_dreaming_ look. Her chin on her palm, elbow on the table at dinner. A thoughtless little smile on her lips, though they were pale; her whole face was pale, but she was smiling. Talking about Eve. 

"Please," added Villanelle, and Anna, distracted and still with that vague mood about her, reached over to pick up the serving bowl. Stretched out her hand and Villanelle took it, scowling. 

"Well," said Anna. "She's beautiful, of course. Isn't she. And so—receptive." 

"You're not going to make me jealous," said Villanelle. She hunched her shoulders over her plate; shovelled food into her mouth. 

"At the same time," Anna said, "she's so _curious_, so…"

"What?" 

Villanelle chewed on the inside of her mouth. Her tongue. Anna shrugged.

"Passionate," she said. "I suppose." She was _blushing_, which Eve couldn't even hear: that was only for Villanelle, sitting at the table watching Anna stare down at her dinner like it was a photograph of a long-lost friend, or a lover. Like she hadn't made it herself in her ancient pot and forked it onto two of her old beige plates, one for herself and one for Villanelle. She prodded her meat with her fork. Villanelle, incensed, chewed. It was good; Anna was a good cook. Anna moved some peas around her plate; silently Villanelle cursed the both of them.

"Why do you—" she said. "What do you mean, 'passionate'? What did she say?"

"Hm," said Anna. That little _smile_. "No, it's nothing," she said. More just. A feeling." 

"A feeling." Villanelle spoke around her mouthful of pork because she knew it would make Anna—yes, there, that annoyed glance. She had used to do things like that when Maxi had distracted Anna, back when they were together. It was like coming home, or how Villanelle would imagine coming home to be: all these little ways she'd collected, an age ago, to get Anna's attention; to drag it back where it ought to be. Refusing to do up her own jacket, so Anna would do it for her. Going through Anna's handbag. Talking and talking until Anna shushed her: it all came back to her. She spread her arms, still chewing. "Well?" she said. "What's it like, this feeling? I want to know."

Anna put down her fork; looked at Villanelle. Really looked at her, for what felt like the first time that night; and even though a smile still lingered around the corners of her mouth there was something—strange, something scooped-out about her eyes. Something, thought Villanelle, startled, that she almost—she almost _recognised_; something both familiar and also so alien to see in _Anna's_ face that the skin all along Villanelle's arms and her back actually prickled up like she was a dog or a beast or a child again and possible to frighten; something she'd seen somewhere before, very recently, but couldn't quite place. 

"It's as if—anything could happen to her," Anna said, of Eve. "That openness, that feeling of—of possibility." She sighed, a little sadly, as Villanelle, wide-eyed, flattened her palms to the cool wood of the table. "And she is," Anna said, "like a bulldog, you know? Tenacious. Not about everything; just…" 

"About what?" said Villanelle. She sat back; pressed spine to chair-back. Wished, suddenly—nonsensically—for a sharp knife. 

Anna gestured between them: herself, and Villanelle. But she said, "About her work, my love." 

And she smiled.  
  
  
**Sunday, 9:15**  
**Hotel Metropol**

"We ordered security on Mr. Muratov," Eve said, "but kept the agents under orders not to draw attention. He's a professor at the university; we're having our people pose as students, and one as a janitor in his building. Obvious intervention will be a last resort; we want to observe her as long as possible." 

"She'll already know they're there," Anna said. 

Eve looked up from her notebook: _sharp_, and bright, like Anna today felt sharp and bright, and blazing. 

"Because you told her?" 

"You would have heard me if I had," Anna said, and then took a breath. "No, because she always knows government security. She says she could pick them out with just a glance at a crowd."

"She didn't know me," said Eve. "The first time we met, she didn't know I was a government agent. She didn't know who I was."

Anna raised her eyebrows; even let herself smile, a very little. Saw the moment Eve's drew together. The tilt of her head.

"My mistake," Anna told her, and sipped her coffee. Almost thinking, for a moment—which she mustn't do. Two tables over, a group of hungover-looking Korean businessmen pulled their mugs to their chests, not looking at one another. In her peripheral vision Eve shifted; recrossed her legs. 

"What do you _want_?" Eve said. It seemed to burst out of her. Anna turned back to look at her, startled, and Eve's retractable pen clicked in; out. In, against the table. "I mean," she said. "This new life of yours."

"Yes," Anna said, with the phrase echoing in her brain. _New life_, she heard. _New life of yours_.

"What would you—" Eve stumbled over the words. "What comes after this? For you?"

"Well," said Anna; and she tried to remember, tried to—to put herself back in her own place. "Teaching is the only thing I've ever done. I speak Russian, English, Spanish, French, so." She spread her hands. "Most of the world has been colonised by one or another." 

"So you want to leave Moscow," said Eve. "Leave the apartment that for years you've kept exactly the same. Get sent—somewhere, wherever the British government can be convinced to send you—"

"I don't like the heat," Anna said. "I would prefer to stay out of the tropics."

"And you'll live in this strange place, teaching whatever languages they don't speak there, and… what?"

"You mean," said Anna, smiling, "do I want to live alone." 

Eve pulled her head back in a jerking a movement and then—softened. Her shoulders slumping forward, the smallest degree. 

"Listening to you," she said. "Together." 

Her tongue, dragging wet over her lower lip. 

"If you were in my place?" said Anna. 

Eve breathed out. Looked away. There was nothing to look at, Anna thought, feeling impatient yet—_kind_, almost; almost merciful. Eve's thumb stretched over her pen mechanism: click-click. Click-click. 

"I would miss her," she said. 

"Yes," said Anna. 

Click-click. Eve closed her mouth; closed her eyes. 

"Sometimes it's good to miss someone," Anna said. "Don't you think? Better to hurt all the time than to be near them; better for—for you, better for." She took a deep breath. "That kind of grinding missing them. If they can't be dead at least you never forget where you are, and it keeps you—in line. Paying attention."

Eve looked at her: that drawing-together.

"Do you have trouble, without that?" she said. "Paying attention?" 

"Oh, me." Anna laughed, a little. Sipped her coffee; looked away. "I'm used to it. I've missed her for years; I've. Missed them both."  
  
  
**Sunday, 19:50**  
**The Flat on Tverskaya Ploshchad **

"Then wear a wire," Villanelle said. "Let me listen in"; and: "No," Anna said, "I couldn't, I would—I'm not that good a liar; she would know." 

Villanelle laughed, loud in the tiny kitchen, and. Something, _something_, a fucking—metal spatula, fine: the clatter of it against the opposite wall. The splatter of eggs on the paint of the door-frame. Beside her Anna flinched; but said nothing. 

"Oh you're not," Villanelle said, turning back. "Don't bullshit me, Madame Leonova. I remember you with Maxi. I remember you with your _colleagues_. I know what kind of a liar you are."

Anna's mouth came open and she stepped back: flinching back like Villanelle had—_slapped_ her and she wanted to, she _wanted_ to, she could. The notepad, on the table: she dragged it to her.

_You little bitch_, she wrote. _You'll do it for her but you won't do it for me?_

Pad in hand she shouldered her way toward Anna who was stumbling back; back toward the kitchen door; through it; out into the living room and Villanelle followed. She shoved the notebook into Anna's hands, and Anna looked down. Read; put her hand out and caught herself on the back of a chair. She sat, heavily, still looking down at what Villanelle had written, her chest rising-falling. Rising-falling. Eyes on the page she blundered a hand along the tabletop: that fucking fountain pen. Her clenching jaw.

_It is already difficult to keep everything straight_, she wrote, _truly_ with Villanelle standing behind her, reading as she went. _I am trying to help you, _daragaya_. I would make a mistake._

"You're a _first rate_ liar," said Villanelle. Her fingers like talons dug into Anna's shoulders. Anna gasped, and gasped: Anna who let Villanelle hit her, who let her humiliate her, who suffered and suffered for her but who wouldn't give her this. "You're where I learned it," Villanelle told her, "and I'm the best."

"Oksana," Anna said. Villanelle dug her fingers in harder; Anna cried out. "I couldn't," she said, desperately, "she would know. I would think about—you, I would think about you listening and doing. Whatever you would—oh. _Bozhe_. Whatever you would do while you listened to her talking to me, I would think about it, I would think about it _all the time_ and I would. I would say things for you, _to_ you, to reach you, and she would. She'd hear the difference. She would know." 

Villanelle leaned down: nuzzled into Anna's hair. Her ear next to Anna's open panting mouth; her hand sliding down Anna's chest. Under the cross of her wrap dress. Her clammy skin. 

"You're right," she murmured, into Anna's hair. Into her right ear: the relevant one. "She probably would."  
  
  
**Monday, 11:45**  
**Hotel Metropol **

"—in which case," said Eve, "my higher-ups are satisfied that the link is provable, and we have enough to follow up on that we don't think it's advantageous to—do you want my sweater?" 

"Oh," Anna said. Stopped rubbing her goose-fleshed arms, with her heart beating so hard she could barely hear herself make words: "I—yes, thank you," she managed, thinking _Not yet_ with her focus narrowing to just the table; chairs; Eve; carefully she looked neither left nor right at any part of the whole of the wider world. "The boiler is broken in our side of the building," she said. "It can't be turned down so the classroom is always. Warm." Reaching out. Wrapping around her shoulders Eve's cardigan, which she had taken from the back of the hotel chair. Teal. Real wool. Most of Eve's layers were Polar fleece. "Anyway, I didn't. Think. Stupid of me." 

"That's all right," Eve said, though one of her eyebrows was up. She slid a dossier across the table: shiny black plasticized cover, unmarked. Anna spread out her hands on the smooth surface. _Not yet_, she thought, once more; and then quietly, calmly, made herself stop thinking it. She didn't open the cover.

"Do you really think it's enough?" she asked, as if idly curious. "It's really only one confirmed contact besides Oksana, and one potential victim who hasn't yet been—"

"_Won't_ be," Eve said.

"—whom we've kept alive for a few days."

"Oh," said Eve, laughing, "thank you, for the vote of confidence." 

Anna gave her a little smile: tight. She could take the folder, she thought. She could simply—take the folder, as she'd have given anything to do two years ago; three; any time before that last bit of whatever it was unbearable in her had burned away. Nothing had happened; not really; she could—she twisted the cuff of the left sweater-sleeve around her right fingers. "I just," she said. "I could get you more, if you—"

"No," Eve said. "Nobody was thrilled in the first place with the idea of an uninvolved civilian being roped in, and—"

"Uninvolved," Anna said, under her breath. 

"You know what I mean." 

Anna hunched her shoulders. Wrapped the sweater tighter around herself; smoothed the dossier. _A new life_, she thought: but as for herself, that was something she'd already been given.

"Can we." She swallowed. Eve's gaze was steady. Anna looked down again, at her own hands, smoothing the dossier. Not opening it. Not walking away. "Somewhere a little more. Private?" she said. "To go over—this." 

Eve sat back; gave her a long look. But she'd already taken her to her room, once before; and the card in Anna's pocket opened the door just next to it. Anna reached up to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. 

"Sure," Eve said, at last. "All right. Come on."  
  
  
**Monday, 15:42**  
**Zaryadye Park**

Anna was late for their scheduled meeting so Villanelle waited, cooling her heels on a park bench; and when at last Anna arrived, biting her mouth, looking drawn and clutching her own elbows, pulling around her—

"What are you wearing?" said Villanelle. She plucked at one sleeve; Anna twisted away but Villanelle kept her grip on the teal wool. Followed her off the path. Crowded against her. 

"Eve lent it to me," Anna said, tugging at her sleeve. "I was cold. Listen, the investigation—" 

"You smell like her," said Villanelle. Her voice came out rough; low. More Russian-sounding, to her own ears. "What were you doing, what did you—"

"Nothing," Anna said. "She invited me up to her room, look, we—" 

Villanelle—reeled back, then—forward, and—

"Lucky you," she said. Both her fists in the front of Eve's cardigan, pulled away from Anna's breasts. Anna was still trying to twist away: pulling her head back, pulling her shoulder back; Villanelle didn't—

"Did you enjoy it?" she said. "Did—was she—_god_—"

And so there was this other thing, this new roaring-up thing she must do: must shove Anna away from her; tear her handbag from her shoulder. Leave her in the park _reeking_ of—and hare off across the fucking city in search of bloody Eve. Sitting in the back of a cab, flicking the door-handle over and over, with _She invited me up to her room_ playing on loop in her head, she growled and thought: to be _interfered_ with like this, by _Anna_ of all people. To be slipping through the service entrance of the Hotel Metropol thinking of Eve's lovely fingers moving Anna's hair aside; pads slipping along her nape to smooth down the cardigan: _I was cold_. She gritted her teeth; slid a key off a housekeeping cart. On the sixth floor the door swung open on an empty room. Surveillance equipment, horrible clothes. No Eve. 

She _screamed_ in frustration. To find one woman in the whole damned city; she threw Anna's bag on the floor and out flew her compact mirror; her wallet (no cash). Her eyeglasses: Villanelle twisted the metal frames out of shape and then saw the little card, the one she'd seen before when she'd gone through the bag before. An address in Eve's neat writing, for a place way out in the Molzhaninovsky District: 32 Novoskhodnenskoye Shosse. She growled again, but _I was cold_, Anna's voice kept repeating, in her head; _I was cold_; and so, jaw clenched, she ran downstairs and hailed another cab. 

The whole ride out, watching the clock—she couldn't _believe_ (_Eve invited me_) that she was spending an hour—_hours_—for no reason other than the images of their hands, Eve's and Anna's (_I was cold_), slipping under the wool of a teal cardigan, sliding it off shoulders (_up to her room_), undoing buttons over bellies, breasts—

"This is you?" said the cab driver, doubtfully, and through her teeth Villanelle had to admit it _was_ her. It was her getting out of the car at a wide gravel turn-out in the highway; her kicking through a rotting wood fence for access to a hideous beige suburban wreck of a house, all its lights out, even the upper floors dark. It was her, Villanelle, who waded through the long wet grass, who rapped on the windows, on the doors; who climbed the decrepit trellis to peer in at the upper rooms which revealed empty darkness: nothing. It was her who was doing it but it wasn't her _fault_, she thought, it wasn't her _doing_ (_cold; she invited me_), not really, not how it counted; and with her mouth in a grim-set line she got back in the waiting cab and: "Tverskaya Ploshchad," she told the driver. "That's where I actually wanted to go."  
  
  


### 7\. THE CASTING COMMAND

**Monday, 18:05**  
**The Flat on Tverskaya Ploshchad**

Anna wasn't sure how long Oksana would take getting back, which meant she hurried laying everything out; but it was still—calming. Wasn't it. Soothing; familiar: the same, in essentials, as every other time she'd prepared for a friend's arrival. The real china tea service. Pastries from the bakery down the street. Fresh black strong-brewed tea, for which she dug out her grandmother's samovar. The items she'd taken from the hotel: one on either side of her seat. And then in pride of place, laid out on her best cloth spread over the table, the centrepiece: tied with a yellow ribbon to match the roses in her cut-glass vase, a thick mass of curly dark hair. 

It went fast enough that when everything was in place, the flat was still quiet. Anna pulled out her chair. Pushed it back in; pulled it out: nothing visible. Anna sat at the table and smoothed the cloth, then moved the plate of pastry an inch to the left, and spread out Eve's curls more attractively against the light blue of the vase. She patted her own hair, then her pocket, thinking: _where did I put my phone, if it's not_—and through the front door burst Oksana, grim and wild-looking even before she saw the table. 

Anna lowered herself back into the seat. Elbows to her knees: it was all starting. It was starting now.

"What did you do," Oksana said. She was breathing hard, must have run up the stairs; but was now moving forward slowly. Perfectly. Her eyes on the table just as Anna had foreseen; as if she were—entranced, Anna thought, feeling giddy. As if the entire force of her attention were fixed on this, at last; on Anna and on the tableau she had created. As if everything else were already being scorched out of Oksana every step she took. Step. Her hand came up. Step. Her hips came to rest against the edge of the table. Her mouth open; her fingertips just touching the lock. Her green eyes, coming up—

"Anna," she said. Her voice rising. "What the hell is this? What did you do?"

"Sit," Anna said. 

But Oksana did not sit. She kept standing there, in front of Anna but not looking at her, her chest rising and falling, taking in the tea things. Anna had a sense almost of vertigo, to be sitting here in front of an Oksana who was standing just where she'd imagined Oksana standing, looking just as she'd imagined Oksana looking, half-panting like she'd thought Oksana would as Oksana was being remade—and yet to be offering the next move and have Oksana decline to dance. 

"_Sit_," Anna said again; and—

"Anna," Oksana said. She spun to face her. Hands hard on Anna's shoulders pulling herself forward, half-straddling her lap with her feet still on the ground. Meeting Anna's gaze now, _insisting_ on meeting it and yet shaking her: not having learned, yet, to be calm. "What happened," she said, "where is Eve, how did you—"

"The negotiations are over," Anna told her, smiling. "Instead of your documents, I got you a new life." 

"You're still—_vypolnyayesh, daragaya_?" Oksana said. She said it under her breath and then she closed her mouth; took a full breath and then, sickeningly, gave a _laugh_ that started weak but got stronger; Anna recoiled. 

"Not one of Eve's," she said. "A real one."

"Anyway you couldn't," said Oksana, still laughing. "You couldn't; she's all right."

"I thought," Anna said, a little too loudly, "that it was fair." She raised her palm to Oksana's face, which settled out of its laughter into a smile, and Anna—that lovely smooth skin. Pale next to her yellow blouse: tie-waist, puffed sleeves. The girl she'd been. Anna noted with some surprise that her own hand was shaking. "Because you got me a new life," she explained. "Before. Did you know?" 

"Oh," said the girl. "Did I?"

Oksana licked her bottom lip. It still curled up at the corner so Anna—closed her hand in Oksana's hair. Pulled her the rest of the way down onto her lap and just held her there. Oksana's gaze turned back, a shade faster than languid. Her eyes back on Anna now, only Anna, with something slowly shifting in her expression. Her eyebrows drawing up; her eyes _sharpening_: _That's right_, thought Anna, _like that_, but the slightest tiny curve still lingered about Oksana's mouth and she couldn't be smiling like that. Not today.

Anna's left palm. Flat to Oksana's warm waist, over her skirt which was floaty; sky-blue. Silky under Anna's hand over Oksana's hot damp skin; Anna dug in her fingers. Moved her right from Oksana's hair to her hand. Oksana laughed again and then Anna's left: darting across to grab the chain from under her own hip; pull the metal cuff around Oksana's wrist. Click it shut. Oksana stared down at her wrist and: there. Better. Not smirking now, Anna thought, was she; with her heart beating. Not getting—_distracted_, not laughing, not—her weight heavy on the fronts of Anna's thighs; on her knees. Oksana didn't even pull. 

"You took away my Maxi," Anna told her. "And they took you away and then every day, _every second of every day_—"

"So you," said Oksana. Looking from Anna, to the cuff, to Anna. Her spine drawing taut. "Anna—"

"I was talking to Eve," Anna told her; Oksana's body _jerked_. The metal cuff rattled against the wood of the chair-arm, and her shoulders twisted: her other hand coming over her body to—but Anna caught it. Held onto Oksana's wrist as Oksana yanked on the cuff at last, yanked and pulled and grunted with effort but they were too close together. Anna had her arm around Oksana's waist, both hands holding Oksana's free arm in place; and straddling Anna's lap Oksana couldn't stand up, or get any leverage with her legs. When, panting, she stopped struggling, Anna let her go with one hand to pull the scarf from beneath her own hip on the other side.

Cream-coloured. Some soft blend. Cashmere, maybe, in part; but long enough and with enough bite to it that Anna, thinking of the video she had (feeling ridiculous) pulled up on the internet, had thought: it will do. It would: she had already looped one end of it into a loose knot. Oksana still panting looked down, disbelieving, when Anna trailed it up her inner arm: she let out a hysterical little laugh but she was paying _attention_; she was paying attention now. She had to pay attention to what Anna had to tell her and she was, she was looking; and she was panting, warm, shifting her bottom on Anna's knees like she had always done when they'd—when—. Anna breathed out hard and let herself just. Just for a moment: trail the free end of the scarf up Oksana's shoulder. Her neck. Goose-flesh all down her chest and when Anna fed cashmere between her glossy lips the brat didn't even startle. Just widened her eyes at her. _Deliberately_, Anna thought, her stomach curdling: deliberate, _mocking_, seeing through Anna like Anna was—just letting Anna stuff the end of Eve's cashmere scarf into her wet little mouth as she turned her head to rub her cheek against it, breathing in Eve's scent and _moaning_, saliva dripping out over her lower lip, her eyes slipping shut as she worked her jaw and _sucked_—

"Your _lovely_ Eve," Anna said. Oksana moaned again, smiling around the scarf so Anna yanked it back but Oksana. Clenched her jaw. Growled at Anna, shaking her head like a dog with a rope; baring her teeth. Anna reached up to slap her jeering little face and as soon as Oksana's wrist was free her hips shifted, her feet shifting trying for enough leverage to twist up to standing but Anna got her hand again. And the scarf: flopping down her front. One sodden end. 

"Well?" Oksana said. She yanked at her wrist again, but Anna held it fast. Breathing hard. Oksana a solid little knot of muscle on her lap. She got the knotted section of the scarf back down to the chair-arm, and pulled Oksana's wrist to match. Oksana let her. Oksana asked, "What did Eve say?"

"This," Anna said, "was days ago." Blinking: eyes on her own hands, pulling the knot over Oksana's knuckles. Her wrist. Pulling the loops tight; just how the video had shown it done. The man had said that doing it this way was _fast_ and _simple_ and Anna had practiced but her hands were still clumsy, pulling tight the knot. Doubling it over the chair-arm and knotting it again. Blinking sweat out of her eyes. She told Oksana, "It wasn't today." 

She sat back and looked up at Oksana, whose—whose gaze had wandered again, not just toward the table—the flowers and the lock of hair—but also, horribly, twisting her neck lazily, almost casually, at the bookcases; the kitchen door; the old couch which couldn't hold any interest for her at all and Anna. Suddenly, like a blade, couldn't breathe from the—gouged-out bleeding from the— _unfairness_ of it. To have done so much, to have—to have—have done so _much_ and still not have Oksana, even for one moment, wholly here. But that was it, that was, that was the problem, wasn't it: there was always an—absence. Something. Something rotted away at the core of the girl. Anna's mind fixed on it and stuttered on it and she. Some. Some vast black pit could open up under her and she had to, to, to get her _back_, to think she couldn't was. _Impossible_, and so she thrust her hands under Oksana's skirt. Hard fingertips against her strong thighs around Anna's thighs. Ran her hands up to Oksana's hips: lace knickers, probably—probably French, she'd been living in Paris, they were probably—the part not lace smooth against Anna's hands as Anna just tried just to breathe. Oksana had left prison and traveled the world fucking and, and killing and with this rot spreading inside her had thought hardly at all, probably, of, of what had happened; of. Of what had burned all the time inside this flat, inside Anna; while meanwhile somewhere in Paris Oksana had walked into a boutique that was, oh, frosted-glass doors in a seventeenth-century facade; all gleaming and new except for the odd bit of the ancient specially placed by someone paid well for the pleasure; and waif-thin salesgirls with silk-scrap neck-scarves and expensive hair at whom Oksana had smiled. At whom she'd, she'd lowered her eyes made them blush; Anna's fingers now digging into the new fleshiness of her hips. Oksana had laughed with them while Anna had been incinerated here in the crucible; Oksana had opened her glossy mouth and the expensive girls had touched their napes. Angled their hips toward her and touched her wrist and before she had drunk wine with them in sidewalk bistros and before she had slid a foot up the insides of their legs and before she had told them whatever she'd taken it into her head to concoct that night and then put her lying mouth on them, all over them, _all over them_ not stopping, she had bought herself silk underwear with lace around the edges not thinking of Maxi, not thinking of Anna, not _thinking_ of what she had _done_ but only of her, her _life_ that she'd gone off and had. Without them. Without regret, or reflection; without. Repentance, or. Or _grief_; or anything other than, Anna thought, a kind of callow enjoyment, scraping fingertips hard under scratchy lace, digging her knuckles into Oksana's skin and her nails into her own palms through silk. Enjoyment, or. Or even, even _boredom_—

"I told Eve it was _grinding_," Anna said. "The way I missed you both, when you left me, but. But that's not right. It was a burning. It _burned_ inside me. C-constantly." 

Oksana's tongue came out again to wet her lower lip but she still wasn't looking at Anna; was still gazing over at the yellow flowers and the pastry and the centrepiece and Anna was shaking. Why was she shaking _now_? She twisted her wrist so her fingerpads came flat against Oksana's skin under the tops of her French silk knickers and down. Oksana squirmed on her lap and Anna pushed further down, _in_. Oksana wasn't very wet but she didn't flinch, her thighs spread over Anna's thighs, her hands gripping the arms of the chair. Anna was gentle. She hooked two fingers into her, right through to the other side of her flesh, and swallowed a kind of—queasiness, resting her head on Oksana's chest. 

"It never stopped," she told Oksana. "I kept—_seeing_ and it, and—the way you cut him up, all those. It was those cuts you didn't really mean to make. You understand? Those were the ones that stayed in my mind. Of course most of the blood was—in one place, but those little. Cuts where the knife slipped. His thighs, his stomach, his. His flat little belly." 

"His what?" said Oksana, but Anna could barely make her out. She was fucking into Oksana, hardly knowing what she was doing, breathing hard against her collarbone with her other hand on Oksana's ass, over the expensive knickers. Pulling her closer. She could feel Oksana's gluteus muscles shifting as she tried again to get leverage with her feet. Anna thought she should spank her. Slap her for being such a distractible little brat but she couldn't quite get enough air. She closed her eyes and saw hotel carpet smeared with—no. Open. Curled her upper spine against Oksana's chest, her mouth against her skin. Couldn't. Couldn't pull herself away. 

"He looked so small," Anna whispered. "His soft little hands." 

"His _what_?" said Oksana, again, and now she was pulling again on her wrists, squirming in her hips as Anna stroked her inside. Stroke. "Anna." Her voice—Anna had never heard that voice. Didn't recognize it and felt: who was this? Who did she have in her lap? Was this Oksana, or some other person, unknown to her, impossible to recognize and with a different name who said, "Anna, where is Eve? Are you still wearing the wire? What did you—"

"And the way," Anna said. Swallowing whatever kept trying to. Climb up her throat. "Afterward. You tucked him up so neatly into his bed, pulled the covers up to his chin but the blood—"

"Eve!" Oksana yelled. "Are you still listening, can you hear me? Eve!" 

"It burned in me," Anna explained. "All the time, it. It burned everything. The suffering, the desire, all the. Wrongness, it burnt it. Right out." Tilting her head back, looking up at Oksana who all at once—Anna felt it first in her hand, the clenching at the root of Oksana's body that pulled into her thighs and her ass and her torso, rearing back, taking their roped-together weight on her legs _lifting Anna up_ and then slamming her back to the ground; teeth-jarring, her hand knocked free—

"I could see," Anna told her, "so much more clearly, after. You d-did that for me. Really. And then I just wanted you to—"

"Eve!" Oksana said, and did it again: rearing up, her thigh muscles clenching around Anna's thighs and lifting to bring the chair crashing down and _splintering_ and pitching to one side dragging with it the table-cloth and the samovar and the flowers; and then they were both on the floor along with all that detritus, the two of them still fastened into the seat of the broken chair tipped sideways, hot tea collecting in a puddle next to their tangled-up knees. Anna's ears were ringing. Echoing. She was digging her hands into Oksana's hips and far away Oksana was shouting _Eve_, shoving at the chair-back with her foot, _are you still there?_, tugging the other end of the cuff around the broken-off end of the chair-arm, _Eve_. "Every day," Anna said, "I hoped you would come back," and elbowed Oksana in the stomach as Oksana, clench-jawed, undid the knotted scarf from around her other wrist. 

"Oh yes?" Oksana said. 

"I knew," Anna explained, "that you needed it, too, I knew it was the only thing that could help you, I knew it would—_no_, it would remake you, it would, stop, stop, _stop_," kicking out at her, punching; rolling them both into the scorching drip-drip of the tea as silently, grimly, the rotten cold and the blankness still inside her, Oksana shaking her head began again to laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Hugh Creigton Hill's "[Triangle in a Quandary](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=28275)," which could also work as a title for this story if it weren't a little too on the nose. 
> 
> Section headings are all taken from the linotype printing process, in which a compositor (operator) struck keys which would trigger an escapement mechanism to open at the bottoms of 72 vertical channels, collectively referred to as the magazine. Matrices with metal-cast characters would be dropped into an assembler tray the length of a line of type; when the tray neared fullness the operator would give the casting command, which would trigger spacebands to be inserted between the words, locking the type into a solid line with no gaps. Such, anyway, is my understanding based on the 1915 edition of _The Book of Wonders_, which also contains the worrying sentence, vis-à-vis the Linotype apparatus: "This machine is almost human."


End file.
